Yesterday I was reading Click, Clack, Moo to LW. It's a delightful children's book about a farmer whose cows find a typewriter, learn to type, and send letters demanding electric blankets because the barn is cold.
We've read the book numerous times. LW enjoys it and always laughs.
This time, he turned to me and asked, "What's a typewriter?"
And I suddenly realized that he's never seen one in action. Have you ever tried to explain a typewriter to a child born in the computer age? NB and IM joined in with questions about how the paper advances and how you correct mistakes when you're typing.
Oddly enough, I'd just shared with a coworker earlier in the day that my children once asked why we say "dial a phone number" when there is no dial involved. And her comments about how people with no memory of carbon copies still cc people on emails prompted me to have a conversation with EM about the origin of the term.
I'm suddenly feeling very old. Things I have used in my life are so strange to my children that they need explanations to understand references to them in text.
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And just the other day I was remarking to someone how I'd been told that my grandfather had cried when it was no longer possible for him to just lift the receiver and tell the operator the number for her to ring. Life had gotten complicated and he was going to have to dial the phone numbers of the people he wanted to call. I think he may have been older than I am now when this event happened in his life. Now we live at such a fast paced life. There is going to be a lot of explaining that is going to have to be done! Hopefully we will be able to remember all those details.
Happily, sometimes change doesn't happen as fast as kids think, though. When we visited the JS birthplace with you guys, LM seemed surprised to learn that clothes had already been invented way back in the 1800's.
Fortunately, we still have an old typewriter, so they can all see it in action when they visit next time.
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